Google wants to put you on the map

On current Australian images used in Google Maps, people appear as indistinguishable dots (see red circle, lower right). The new images promise to be as good as or better than this one (inset left) taken over The Hague in the Netherlands.

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Here's a chance to make a spectacle of yourself in front of the
whole world on Australia Day.

On Friday, an aircraft hired by Google will be doing a series of
low-level swoops over parts of Sydney, photographing the ground and
waters below.

The three-seater plane, decked out in Google livery, will have
special permission to fly at an altitude of 600m.

Providing the photographs turn out to be good enough quality,
the images will be integrated into Google Maps, the free online
mapping service used by millions of people around the
world.

Usually, people aren't aware when they are caught in aerial
photographs that later end up being used in Google Maps. This time
however Google actually wants Sydneysiders to do whatever they can
to make themselves visible.

The company is encouraging people to wear something
distinctive, hold up a sign (face-up), draw in the sand, or even
arrange themselves into a "fun formation".

According to Mr Lars Rasmussen, head of engineering for Google
Australia and one of the lead engineers for Google Maps, the images
will be the highest resolution available on the popular mapping
service.

He said the images will add a "few more zoom levels" to the
local maps and be between three to four times more detailed than
are currently available for Australian terrain on Google Maps.

That would put them on par or better than the Google Map images
of the Netherlands where, for instance, one of the aerial
photographs shows a woman in a swimsuit sunbathing on the balcony
of a low-rise block of units.

The best available resolution images on Australian aerial images
allows you to see cars clearly, but people are generally visible as
pinpricks on the photos.

"This is the first time we have tried this on any scale," said
Mr Rasmussen, one of the original developers of Google Maps, who is
based in Sydney. "We have no idea whether it will work, but we
thought it'd be fun to try."

The plane is scheduled to begin flying over Centennial and Moore
parks at 9am from where it will head out to Bronte Beach. The
flight will zig-zag its way across the inner east, the city,
Harbour and the lower North Shore, ending at about 2.15pm.

Google says the experiment will depend on fine, clear weather
and that the flyover times may vary depending on prevailing
conditions.

The images, however, will take up to another six weeks to make
it on to Google Maps.

"It's a bit of an experiment and if it's a success, we'll
probably do it in other places [around the world]," Mr Rasmussen
said, indicating that Google would work on organising similar
flyovers in places like Paris on Bastille Day or over cities in the
United States on Independence Day.

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On current Australian images used in Google Maps, people appear as indistinguishable dots (see red circle, lower right). The new images promise to be as good as or better than this one (inset left) taken over The Hague in the Netherlands.